


we have stars for eyes (and holes for hearts)

by Viraaja



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Armitage Hux is Not Nice, Dark Poe Dameron, Fix-It of Sorts, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Poe Dameron Needs A Hug, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:00:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25242037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viraaja/pseuds/Viraaja
Summary: He knows how this is going to work. He’s been here dozens of times before, has watched the scene play out in every conceivable way. There will be no surprises this time. No twists in the plot he can’t predict, no loose threads that will come back to haunt him. He had lived this himself, a long time ago, but now he observes, and he has his plan, and he has found his moment.(Major Character Death Tag: This is a multiverse time travel fic and the tag only applies to the initial timeline, the rest is a fix-it of sorts, so if MCD is not generally your thing this might still be palatable).
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Armitage Hux
Comments: 9
Kudos: 39
Collections: Gingerpilot Week 2020





	we have stars for eyes (and holes for hearts)

**Author's Note:**

> Pumped this out for Gingerpilot week.
> 
> Day 3: Angst

He knows how this is going to work. He’s been here dozens of times before, has watched the scene play out in every conceivable way. There will be no surprises this time. No twists in the plot he can’t predict, no loose threads that will come back to haunt him. He had lived this himself, a long time ago, but now he observes, and he has his plan, and he has found his moment.

There are certain things that change, no matter what precautions Poe takes. Little dark spots of chaos in the timeline that serve a force far removed from the one wielded by Leia, or Kylo or Rey. Sometimes there are four troopers instead of three, sometimes Armitage is already injured, often times Chewie is dead, and he and Finn are fleeing a futile rescue mission that can’t be salvaged even by Armitage’s defection. But it’s what remains the same that provides the logic for Poe’s reasoning, the excuse he has made for himself.

Armitage will betray the Order - that is the first inevitability. Finn will shoot him, either in the arm or in the leg - that is the second. The third is that Armitage will always resist rescue when presented with the opportunity. And whether the timeline’s Poe drags him from the Steadfast, or Finn offers him a chance to flee, Armitage will always say no. He will always choose to stay behind.

That is the key to all of this, Poe tells himself. Because the fourth inevitability is that if Armitage stays on the Steadfast, he dies. And that’s what will make what he does next okay.

He’ll give this timeline’s Poe the opportunity first, just to be sure. The last thing he wants is to rob him of the chance to have a future with Armitage, even if that future ends in tragedy. But by now he knows what signs to look for, he already understands the machinations that led to this moment. And Poe knows that this version of himself will leave Armitage behind.

Finn shoots him in the leg, this time.

The wound won’t break the artery, that only happens when Armitage is already injured, fate wielding a blow so severe that sometimes Poe wonders if it is not meant as a mercy. That version of Armitage is always gray at the temples, edges worn thin by far more than a year spent spying. Poe has never tried to find out why. But the hero in him can guess, can craft a conclusion that has kept Poe awake at night wondering if he shouldn’t just blow that whole galaxy up in an act of petty revenge against a timeline that would deal Armitage such a brutal, unforgiving hand.

This version of Poe does not drag Armitage to the Falcon.

It only confirms what he already knew, and he tries not to take it personally, though a small voice inside his head always begs and pleads and curses as he watches himself turn his back on Armitage and walk away as if he never mattered - as if the thought of Armitage’s impending death never even crossed his mind.

Poe has lost track of how many times he has observed this moment, and he oftentimes wonders why he tortures himself with it - what subverted desire makes him experience _this_ scene again and again, when he could have just as easily skipped to a time when he was happy, when he was together with Armitage.

More often he wonders why it has taken him as long as it has to do _this_. As if some sense of moral responsibility keeps him from meddling. Just the fact that Poe exists here is meddling enough. He knows that much by now.

He won’t have time to wait for the Falcon to take off. Armitage will be found by troopers before then and if Pryde is with them he will be killed in the hallway rather than the command deck. So he has to act now, and he has to act fast.

Poe abandons the shadow he has been observing from, abandons the safety of anonymity with it when he removes his helmet, because Armitage is armed with a mono-molecular blade and Poe has no desire for his own death - not any more. He’s dressed in standard issue stormtrooper armor, native to this timeline, a set he had swiped upon landing his cloaked fighter in the auxiliary hanger bay.

He yearns for his usual armor, the stuff made from titansteel, a protometalic compound unique to a timeline Poe discovered so many skips ago. Used in the production of ships and armor alike, it deflects all blaster and cannon fire, providing a protection so acute that the armies of that galaxy had developed weapons based on biology, rather than energy. After harvesting what he needed, his armor and a starfighter classed smuggling ship, Poe had scrubbed the timeline’s skip coordinates from his ship log, burned the scratched out calculations that had led it its discovery. The darkest timeline, Poe called it - a world without morals, where men shattered the brain matter of one another in a genocidal purging of their foes, where med bays were scarce even on the largest star destroyers, because men either survived or became a casualty with very little else between.

But he’s made it this far successfully without his titansteel armor, as he knew he would, as he always did, but there is one last hurdle to overcome, one which Poe has no data on to evaluate, no experience to observe.

Because Poe is going to take this Armitage for himself.

Armitage is struggling to stand when Poe’s shadow falls across him. Blood leaks from his wound in a steady yet slow stream, staining the floor at Poe’s feet in a trail from where he has crawled. Armitage does not see his face, not at first, his eyes are unfocused, consumed in a thought Poe is not privy to, and he barks “Help me up, soldier. Take me to med bay. Can’t you see I’ve been injured?” But Poe sees when Armitage’s eyes focus on him, he notes the exact moment recognition dawns, the snarl splitting his face almost severe enough to drown out his confusion, because Poe is recognizably Poe, but he is not the same. Poe knows this. Time has touched him in a way that has left him different, seeped him in a foil of illusions, a cloak of scars invisible on his skin but yet cling to him in a tenacious unobservable knowing. Armitage detects it, and Poe can see he is scared.

“Dameron.” The question is there, underneath the word, as if Armitage can’t quite parse who it is he is witness to.

“Heya, Hugs.” The words ring familiar, rusty but true, even after all this _time._ “You’re coming with me.”

For the first time Poe has observed, Armitage does not protest.

-

Armitage Hux is dead.

Poe retches into the fresher’s bowl, his heaves long since turned dry, his stomach empty of anything but a slow trickle of bile. He can hear his pad ringing in the other room, as it has been for the last several hours. It will be Finn or Rey, calling from halfway across the galaxy fighting a threat that now feels more phantom than real, because right then, Poe’s enemy sits fifty stories above, gathered in an auditorium of holos, wielding authority over a man they had not personally fought, a man that had won them a war, but they still felt righteous enough to condemn.

Armitage Hux is dead, and there was nothing Poe could do.

He’d been with Rey and Finn at the time, fighting the last holdout of the First Order alongside the remaining Resistance fleet. Hux had insisted he go, understanding Poe’s desire to see this thing through to the end. _It_ _’ll drive you more mad than you are now, if you don’t get to fight._ Armitage had teased, and Poe had taken him into his arms and pressed kisses to his face and affirmed, _You love that I_ _’m mad - mad about you, Armitage._ And Armitage had laughed at that, had smiled and rolled his eyes and blushed at him sweetly even as he worried for his husband’s life, as he worried if this fight would be his last.

Little did either of them realize it wasn’t Poe’s life that was in danger.

The news had reached him mid-battle, Rose coming over the comm to tell him to get back to the Falcon ASAP, because there was no way what she was reading over the holonet could be true. But if it was? Poe needed to get to Coruscant _now_.

He’d taken the Millennium Falcon, because it was the fastest ship they had. Still, Poe had been too late.

Armitage’s arrest came on the heels of the confirmation that the final bastion of the First Order had successfully been flushed out, while Poe was tied up elsewhere, fighting a fight the New Republic has supported in name if not resources. With the fall of the Order, Armitage’s life was deemed no longer of value, his knowledge and resources run dry, used up and leaving him free for judgment. Because what were the lives of the trillions he had saved in the face of the billions who had died to Starkiller?

Armitage Hux is dead, but just over thirty-six standard hours ago he had been alive.

The Senate had moved quickly, far faster than that of the hand of justice, and Poe suspects the decision had been made long ago. His vote on behalf of the Yavin system had not be needed, as it could not be counted, because of the _conflict of interest_ , they explained. There was no time to holovise the trial, but the footage exists, they assured. They would provide a copy, they promised. It could take up to four weeks, they apologized. The case against him had been argued in great detail and the decision had not come easy, they lied.

They could not provide his body, they regretted. But here are his possessions, you can have them, as there is no next of kin.

Their marriage license sits locked in a folder in the New Republic datacloud. It is still listed as pending, has been for the last six months, since the day of their wedding.

Poe crawls from the fresher across the floor of his Senate-issued apartment to his still ringing datapad. He is numb now, the pain distant, and relief blooms in his chest as he realizes that this is only a nightmare - that he will pick up the call and hear _his_ voice, he will wake up and find Armitage beside him, warm and solid and breathing against the curl of his arm, into press of his lips.

But then he answers the holocall and Rey’s panicked voice cuts through reality as surely as it cuts through spacetime. _“Poe, Poe- Are you there? What happened? Where are you? We’re coming, we’re on our way.”_

“He’s gone.” The words break, his throat is raw - from retching, from crying, from _screaming_. “Rey, he’s _dead_.”

Armitage Hux is dead, and Poe thinks he might be too.

-

He patches Armitage up in the ship’s med bay. The wound to his leg is nasty, taken at point blank range, the skin around it having absorbed as much of the physical impact as it had the bolt of energy itself. Armitage is shaking against him even as he injects him with a fast acting analgesic that should provide almost instant relief. Poe places a hand on Armitage’s shoulder - it’s all he will allow himself, for now. Armitage flinches away, eyes sightless as he stares at a spot over Poe’s shoulder, the genius graded gray matter in his head absorbing an amount of information that even Armitage struggles to keep up with.

The bacta in this patch came from a planet within a system in a timeline Poe had spent several years in. The whole of the med bay was outfitted with tech from the same. There, medical science had evolved into something Poe could only call immortality, people living hundreds of years in a timeless youth that resulted in a death that had nothing to do with the body. Peace had consumed that galaxy with a monotony of indifference, as if the lack of stakes in life caused sentient creatures to abandon their passion, their dreams and their spirit along with their conflict, along with their very mortality.

Poe had taken what he needed from that world, just enough to assuage the toll he was beginning to see on his own body. Because even here, skipping through universes as surely as he once did space, the entropy of linear time catches up to him still, in the hours and minutes and days and years spent outside of it.

“I know you have a lot of questions.” Poe wraps the bandage around Armitage’s bare thigh, avoiding his skin where he can, understanding that this is not _his_ Armitage, not yet at least. “I’ll answer them all, after you’ve rested. But for now what you need to know is that I _am_ Poe Dameron, but I am not the Poe Dameron you know. I come from another timeline, another universe, different from yours, but similar. I took you from the Steadfast because Pryde would have killed you otherwise.”

“You’ve kidnapped me.” Armitage states it as if he were describing the weather, simple and absolute and entirely mundane.

“I rescued you.” Poe corrects, but the shame eats at him, as he expected it might. “I saved your life.”

“No.” Armitage meets his eyes finally, they’re grey-green, just like he remembers. “You’ve condemned me to yours.” The quality of his voice is dark, scared, _angry -_ and Poe is reeling with how quickly he has put everything together, how completely Armitage _understands_.

He leaves Armitage in the med bay. Locks it behind him. Slides down the pressurized blast door until he ends up collapsed on the floor, knees to his chest, head hung between them, shaking with grief and guilt and something manic inside him that claws its way through his very essence, something dark and wholly not right, not good, and not _him -_ something that tells him Armitage will come around, because what other choice does he have.

-

Poe acknowledges the one year anniversary with a trip.

He’s been skipping a lot lately, a reckless indulgence he allows himself because it’s all that makes him feel alive, anymore. Mostly, Poe doesn’t want to feel alive. But he’s a coward and a failure, and someone needs to suffer for Armitage and since he can’t make the Senate suffer without throwing the galaxy into another all-out war, he shoulders the burden and bears the accompanied weight with a sense of purpose.

Rey called him earlier, he had picked up. It was their first conversation in six months, and she had sounded good on the call, though her grief was plain. He had feigned good too, assured her he was mourning in his own way, visiting Arkanis to tie up that loose end of Armitage’s past, to answer the question he always whispered to Poe in the dark, after a love-making that had set Poe’s toes to curl and his heart to race - _What if she is alive?_ She was, and she had turned Poe away, stricken with a grief that had nothing to do with Armitage’s death and everything to do with his life. _He was no son of mine, he was a monster, just like his father_.

Poe won’t call her Armitage’s mother. She is the monster, just like the rest of them.

Poe punches the propulsion engine and engages the hyperdrive in a rhythmic pattern of habit. The ship, some no-name light freighter that lacks a weapons system in favor of a hyperdrive that rivals that of the Falcon, skips out of space. He breaks lightspeed for a blip before he pulls it back out, dropping the shuddering ship into the blazing vision of a sun that swallows his viewport whole. Poe barely blinks as the instrument panel alights with the screaming sounds of warnings and failures. He is lost to the rhythm of the skip, the sun disappearing as quickly as it appeared, replaced with the mountainous visage of some unknown planet, the night sky a velvety swatch of black that burns the stars into Poe’s eyes as he skips again, the vision streaking into the strung out pattern of lightspeed.

Again and again he skips, waiting for the thrill that usually blooms, the tightening of his chest when he comes too close to collision, when he doubts his reflexes as much as he doubts the rest of himself - chasing an end that he is too scared to commit to, because whatever goodness remains inside him lives yet still for Armitage’s memory. When Poe is gone, Armitage’s death will be sealed, his memory lost, the impact he made alleviated, because Poe’s heart holds all that is left of the man that Armitage Hux was, and that is still too precious to Poe to loose.

He drops out of hyperspace again, but this time it’s not a planet or space or even a sun that greets him, but a vast consuming _emptiness_. His ships hangs there, stuck in an orbit around something he can not see, that his sensors can not pick up. Poe cycles through the viewports, the rear revealing a terrifying image of deep space warped into broken fragments, like a mirror that has been shattered, or the multi-lensed layering of an insect’s sight. The ship begins to groan, the shuddering Poe had long ago grown used to reaching a crescendo of screeches, all while his instrument panel blinks at him as if nothing were amiss.

Understanding settles a peace into Poe that he has not felt in a very long time.

Reason tells him that this is it, he finally did it, he found his way out. But there is a reckless something that lives in him yet, a part of his psyche that refuses to die, because he is Poe Dameron, the hero general of the Resistance, whose dance with death will only ever be outlived by his reputation.

Poe punches the propulsion engine, engages the hyperdrive. The ship struggles against the black hole it is being consumed by, shields shaking, barely holding, durasteel screaming, but so is he now, as the pressure of gravity grows so strong that he feels it there in the cockpit, licking at his edges and fraying him apart.

The ship makes the jump, barely.

Poe is shaken. His palms sweat and his heart races and the echoing sound of his own screams ring in his head. He jumps home, suddenly sick with himself. He is a coward and a failure, and he thinks that Armitage would be disappointed in him right now. He thinks he’s taken this all too far. Poe always took things too far, Armitage told him. He didn’t know when to quit, didn’t know when to admit defeat. _It_ _’s what won you over_. Poe would joke. _I didn_ _’t give up pursuing you and look at us now._ Happy, together, in love.

Dead.

He docks his ship at the storage hanger at Yavin Station Port. His normal dock is filled, and even the controller seems confused as to why. But they have a free spot on a different level and Poe secures his ship there, makes the short walk to the train station and heads home. His apartment isn’t far, and while Kes had stopped asking for Poe to move back home, he thinks he might, now. He thinks it might be time.

His key code doesn’t work when he gets to the door and he has to override it with his thumbprint. It’s late, well into the early morning, and the security lights are all that illuminate his way to his bedroom. Poe doesn’t even bother with the fresher - he is exhausted, the events of the day catching up with him now that he in within these familiar walls, walls he had once shared with Armitage. The door to his bedroom _whisks_ open on silent tracks and Poe steps past the threshold. The lights dim on as he had programmed them to do, and he’s functioning on routine now, eyes hooded, head sleepy.

“Lights one-hundred.”

Poe blinks, hearing himself say the words, but he doesn’t remember speaking them.

“Who the _fuck_ are you?”

Poe turns towards the bed, ice trickling down spine, spreading slow, reaching deep.

There in his bed, is himself. A mirror image he knows well, physical and real and right but _wrong,_ because beside him is Armitage. And Armitage Hux is _dead_.

He stares at himself, is _stared at_ by himself, and there is confusion there, in the familiar dark eyes - but it is Armitage that Poe can’t tear himself from. Because there, in Armitage’s meticulous gaze, he sees his mind working. It only takes him a moment, maybe two, but in his eyes Poe sees the pieces fall into place, the shrewd understanding parsing the information in a way Poe has never seen in another, in a way he has always admired, unique to his amazing genius of a husband. And he watches, as a dark smile plays at Armitage’s lips.

“You’re having a nightmare, love.” He tells his Poe, but his eyes never leave his. “Come back to bed, he’ll be gone when you wake up next.” And then he turns the lights out, and Poe is left in the dark, mind reeling, finally catching up.

He races back to his ship, the dock controller surprised to see him, even more surprised when he pulls out of the station and right into hyperspace and screams at him over the still engaged comms “ _What the kriff do you think you_ _’re doing?”_

He knows exactly what he is doing. He tears into spacetime, back to the last coordinates in his log, adjusted just a little, just enough so he drops into space outside the gravity well of the black hole. He gathers himself, steeling his nerves as he engages his shields, in case this goes wrong, in case this goes _right_.

And then he punches the propulsion engine, engages the hyperdrive, and he skips again.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Find me on tumblr @viraaja ♥


End file.
